


Hide in Plain Sight

by dramatic owl (snarky_panda)



Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: Angst, Depression, Female Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Mistaken Identity, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarky_panda/pseuds/dramatic%20owl
Summary: Only Phoebe knew who was really buried in the grave beneath the headstone marked with Helga's name.
Relationships: Helga Pataki/Arnold Shortman, Phoebe Heyerdahl/Gerald Johanssen
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49
Collections: Half a Moon: 14 Days of Celebrating Women, Ladies Bingo 2019





	Hide in Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the ladiesbingo challenge for the prompt: mistaken identity (wildcard) and for the halfamoon challenge for the prompt: dark.
> 
> Content notes: death, offscreen murder, offscreen violence, depression.

I

Only Phoebe Heyerdahl knew who was really buried in the grave beneath the headstone marked Helga Geraldine Pataki, but she would keep that secret until the day came when revealing it wouldn't endanger her friend.

An opportune sequence of events, Helga had cynically called it before going off into hiding again, somewhere Phoebe would probably never discover, while her friends and family mourned her needlessly and another young woman went unidentified and unmourned by her own friends and family, her murder unsolved.

_Jane Malone._

She was twenty-three, the same year as them. She'd given notice at work and had spoken of her plans to leave Hillwood at the end of the summer, to try out a new city and a new job. Everyone assumed she'd done just that, since she was moving out of the apartment she'd been sharing with Helga, so it didn't occur to anyone she was even missing. Phoebe had only met her a couple of times, but she remembered she was pretty. Tall, slim, long legs. Blonde and blue-eyed. Just like Helga. They could've been sisters.

In the cemetery, listening to the priest reciting consoling words over the grave, Gerald's supportive arm around her offered little comfort. It shouldn't have been so sunny and crisp today of all days. Phoebe wanted to start screaming and never stop. Instead she turned and mashed her face into the crook of her fiancé's shoulder and wept.

* * *

II

Everyone in the neighborhood had always suspected that Big Bob Pataki was associated at least indirectly with the mob, certainly through contact with his publicity man Nick Vermicelli. But it always seemed innocuous enough; perhaps, through Nick, he'd received some financial backing, but beyond that he was just a plain businessman. Obviously, they said, he'd been in much deeper than everyone thought, his daughter Helga had suffered the consequences, and the rest of the family had gone into witness protection.

That was the rumor that began to circulate when the Pataki family suddenly left town post-funeral, and likely the story would eventually take its place among the store of Hillwood urban legends passed down from generation to generation.

But Phoebe knew Helga hadn't been an intended target of the mob and she suspected the Pataki family just needed to get away from the place where they'd lost their daughter.

The day after the body was found, she was in the Hillwood Bean on campus and hadn't yet heard about it. Helga had been missing for about a month by then and Phoebe, distraught and unable to concentrate on anything, was in the process of arranging a leave of absence and an incomplete for the graduate coursework she'd already started this semester. She'd stopped in the café to get out of the rain after leaving the program director's office. The place was packed but one of the small tables near the window was free when she entered, so she'd left her stuff at the table to save it before going up to buy a cup of tea she wouldn't drink.

Out of habit, and without any intention of actually studying, Phoebe had brought her schoolbooks with her. Absently, she opened the book that she'd removed from her backpack and left on the table before going to the counter, and discovered that her bookmark with the university logo had been replaced with a small sheet of paper. Her heart skipped a beat then began to pound when she saw the word 'Grubworm' at the top of the paper. She searched frantically around but saw no familiar face in the café. The note was unsigned and barely legible, as if someone had written with their non-dominant hand to disguise the handwriting, but it didn't matter. It was from Helga and she'd been right there in the café without Phoebe seeing her.

Later, when Phoebe met up with her friend on the designated bench at the designated time, Helga was covered up in a trench coat and man's fedora, looking like a hard-boiled detective escaped from a 1940s noir. The rain had stopped but the finished wood of the river-walk glistened with drops beneath their feet and the autumn evening was damp and cold. They could see the yellow police tape further down the boardwalk cordoning off the area where Jane Malone's body had washed up from the river, and the silhouettes of the police still examining the scene.

"We borrowed each other's clothes a lot of the time," Helga explained.

Of course. They'd been roommates and friends, and they were about the same height and build. Only this time Helga's I.D. had been left in one of the pockets, still recognizable despite being waterlogged.

"Sometimes I didn't want to take a purse or a bag with me, so I switched it to my jacket pocket. She did the same thing a lot."

"Someone will realize she's missing too, Helga. They might figure out the truth at some point. And what about her family?"

"I know, I know. And I'm sorry I've burdened you with this, Pheebs. This mix-up may actually protect me and I just…wanted you to know I'm not dead. And I didn't want you thinking that I just disappeared on you, or anyone else. I know the whole thing is lousy. I'm hoping this will buy me some time to maybe – eventually – make it right. This has to stay between us."

"I won't tell anyone."

That evening at the river was the last time she saw her best friend. They'd hugged and said their tearful goodbyes and then Helga was gone.

After the funeral Phoebe spent most of her days in bed unable to move, crushed by guilt and melancholy, and sick with shame for feeling relieved that it wasn't her friend who'd died. She couldn't face Gerald's sympathetic and worried expressions. They knew each other too well, and she wondered if he'd already guessed that there was more to her devastation than just losing her best friend.

Unintelligible murmurs reached her ears from the living room sometimes. Gerald and Arnold talking, maybe about other things too but probably mostly about her. She was glad they had each other. She knew how hard it was for Gerald to deal with her, and poor Arnold had never stopped loving Helga. This had crushed him too.

Well, wherever Helga was now she'd be happy to know that Arnold had returned to Hillwood for her funeral and shed tears for her. She'd been a mess when things didn't work out and he left town, and Phoebe was sure that was the turning point for her, the start of the reckless, self-destructive behavior that led to her current situation.

"Hey." Gerald entered the darkened bedroom one day and gingerly sat on the edge of her side of the bed, reaching down and brushing her hair off her face. "How are you feeling?"

Phoebe shrugged. She had no idea what time of day it was and she hadn't done work of any kind for a month. The shades in the bedroom had remained down; lights only went on when she dragged herself out of bed to go to the bathroom or take a shower, or when Gerald dressed in the morning and undressed for bed. She barely ate.

"I brought your iPad over, just in case you want to log on and check your emails. I'll leave it right here on the nightstand."

"Thanks."

He leaned down and tenderly kissed her forehead. "I love you, babe."

"I love you, too." She reached up, touched his cheek. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess."

"It's okay." Gerald ran his fingers through her hair. "We'll get through this."

Phoebe closed her eyes, felt the sudden absence of his fingers and his weight shifting off the mattress, heard his footsteps cross to the door and the door close behind him with a soft click. She lay still for several minutes, debating whether it would take too much effort to sit up, switch on the lamp, reach for the iPad, and log on to read over a months' worth of emails.

She decided it would, and rolled over to face away from the nightstand and her iPad.

//

Halloween provided some respite when Gerald decided to buy candy and hand it out to the kids in the neighborhood.

Phoebe was hesitant to participate at first. She'd always enjoyed this holiday and that was the problem. What right did she have to enjoy anything now? But she realized that Gerald was doing it for her, to cheer her up, and she didn't want to let him down more. Besides, she needed to prepare herself for the holiday season's onslaught after Halloween ended; there would be obligations she couldn't bow out of.

When the first trick-or-treaters started arriving, she pulled on socks, blue jeans, and a dark blue tee-shirt and padded out to the living room for the first time since the funeral, where she greeted Arnold. He was seated on the couch, and on the coffee table in front of him was an open bag of miniature chocolate bars that he and Gerald had held back for themselves and a bowl of candy corn. The television was on, tuned to a channel that was marathoning classic horror movies the entire day.

"How are you feeling, Phoebe?"

"Okay."

He was visibly concerned for her too and the weight of guilt bore down heavier on her chest. Arnold probably wasn't coping so easily either. As far as he knew Helga really was dead and he'd never had a chance to resolve things with her, nor would he. He didn't know the truth that she knew.

"How about you? Are you okay, Arnold?"

"I miss her. I wish things had been different between us. That we'd parted better."

Phoebe sat on the couch beside him. She'd been wallowing enough and he needed a sympathetic friend too.

"Your interests and life goals diverged during college and that changed your relationship. It wasn't your fault, Arnold. Or hers."

"Yeah. I know." He sighed. "I just wish—we were both angry and hurting and we lashed out at each other. I wish it hadn't been that way. And now it's too late to apologize."

"Helga still loved you. And I think she realized you still loved her too. And—for what it's worth, I don't think she stayed angry at you."

It was the truth. Helga would always love him, and she wasn't angry at him, not in any obvious way anyway. She was just sad and she blamed herself. But Arnold didn't need to know that.

"I'm glad. Thanks, Phoebe."

Gerald returned to the living room, came over and kissed her forehead affectionately before sitting in the armchair adjacent to the couch.

"I'll get the door on the next ring," Phoebe offered.

"It's all the littler kids coming now, since it's still light, so you'll see a lot of cute costumes."

They spent the rest of the day, into the night, watching movies, talking, eating pizza and candy, and taking turns answering the door and handing out candy to the kids. It was a good day, a day when for a few hours the gloom lifted, and it made Phoebe happy that Gerald was so clearly pleased to see her in a better mood.

Sadly, it didn't last. Her mood plummeted, as expected, just a few days later, on Election Day. At least Bob Tanner lost the race for mayor, even if it was close. But his face plastered all over the television all day made her nauseous.

"Glad he lost," Gerald remarked as they watched the results come in and the race was called. "Tanner always came across kind of shady to me. Like he surrounds himself with shady people."

Phoebe said nothing, just nodded agreement. If he only knew.

//

Christmas Day came and Phoebe's soon-to-be-one-day in-laws hosted a large dinner. Showered and dressed in her bathrobe, damp hair wrapped in a towel, she sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee that morning and logged in to read her emails for the first time in three months. There were unopened messages from friends offering sympathy, reaching out to see if she was okay, urging her to call if she needed to talk. Messages from school announcing events on campus. A couple of junk emails that had made it past her filter and into her inbox.

Phoebe moved the junk into her trash box and remorsefully faced the long list of unanswered emails she'd been actively avoiding from supportive friends she'd been neglecting. She was about to answer the lovely, inspiring email from Lila Sawyer when she realized she'd seen something among the junk emails. She closed Lila's email and marked it as unread so she would remember to open it later and reply. Then she clicked into the trash and checked the 'from' column for the name she'd seen but initially dismissed. G. Falcone.

It was the 'Falcone' that had buzzed at the back of her mind, even though she'd initially dismissed it. 'Mighty Falcon' had always been Helga's codename to her 'Grubworm'; G. was Helga's middle initial. One message had come a week ago, the second late the night before. Phoebe opened one and hovered the pointer over the 'from' field until she could see the full email address. She released the breath she'd been holding. The weight on her chest lifted a little. She read the whole message, read the second message, then saved both in a new folder to revisit after she'd gotten through Christmas Day with the Johanssens.

* * *

III

They met at the botanical gardens in the city where Helga was somewhat settled for now. It was a brisk January day, but not uncomfortably cold. With their bright coats, hats, and scarves, they blended in with the other visitors strolling the gardens, where the hardiest plants still thrived despite the cooler weather.

"You doing okay, Pheebs?"

"A little better. How about you?"

Helga shrugged. "Okay under the circumstances. It'll be a while before I can settle down anywhere, if ever."

"Where are you staying?"

"At an inn."

"Don't they need a credit card? I didn't think hotels take cash anymore."

"Everyone will take cash. But you still have to have I.D., so I got fakes. I've got Jane's I.D. and credit cards but I didn't want to use those. It's not right."

Phoebe stared at her. "You have her credit cards?"

"Remember? She had my I.D. on her because she was wearing my jacket, and she left hers in the apartment. I have all of her cards and I.D."

"I know, but…" she trailed off.

A gnawing sensation ate at the sides of her stomach. She supposed Jane's I.D. couldn't be left around to be found once they'd identified Jane as Helga. Helga could be a little mercenary at times and she'd called it an opportune sequence of events; and yet none of it was really in her control. Still, it sounded so cold and terrible.

"I hate lying to Gerald," Phoebe lied softly after a long pause. It was the truth, just not what was bothering her in that moment. "And keeping things from him."

"Do you think he picked up on it?"

Phoebe shook her head. "I don't know. I think he was a little disappointed that I was traveling without him, even though he has school and work and couldn't travel anyway. But he seemed to understand that I needed to get away from Hillwood for a little while. Under the circumstances. So maybe he did know." She changed the subject. "So does the G in G. Falcone stand for Geraldine?"

"Gertrude. Like Arnold's grandma." She glanced at Phoebe and laughed softly. "I never could let it go completely."

"Helga—" she began, but stopped, unsure of how to say what she was thinking or even if she ought to say it.

For a smart woman Helga made some really bad choices, but she was well aware of them and she didn't need Phoebe harping on her about them. Especially now, when she was suffering the consequences in a big way. Anyway, to be fair, she couldn't have foreseen how things would turn out in this case. Getting involved with a married politician was reckless and foolish, but it wasn't Helga who'd had expectations and taken it seriously. She was in it for a good time and nice gifts in the short term, for as long as it lasted. An escape. Again, a really stupid choice, but Helga never had any intention of bilking him for anything else once he was ready to call it off; she would've let him go without any strings. How could she — or anyone for that matter — have predicted _he_ would want to leave his wife for _her_?

Helga's theory was that Bob Tanner's people had decided to intervene and take action, possibly without his knowledge even, when they saw that he was willing to tank his political career for her. And targeted the wrong person.

Phoebe agreed with her theory, and she'd also concluded that Bob Tanner was a complete dimwit. How Helga even had the patience to have a conversation with him was beyond her.

"How are you going to make ends meet?" she asked instead.

"I've submitted several articles I wrote. They're under my new name. If they get accepted and I get paid maybe I'll keep trying to write freelance. I've got fake I.D., even a fake social security number and card, so I've been able to get some temporary work."

"Where did you get all the fake I.D.?"

"Remember Gerald's friend Fuzzy Slippers? He hooked me up with someone."

If Helga had been dealing with Fuzzy Slippers, there was a good chance Gerald knew the truth; he still talked with Fuzzy Slippers all the time. Which meant Arnold knew too. No wonder Gerald hadn't given her a hard time about traveling out of town so suddenly. He must've known who she was going to see.

"Arnold came back for the funeral."

"Yeah, I know, I saw him."

"You were there that day?"

"I wanted to pay my respects to Jane. It was the least I could do."

Phoebe nodded. "I can't help thinking about her family, though."

"She didn't have any immediate family."

"What?"

"She lost her parents when she was pretty young and was raised by her grandmother. Then her grandmother died while she was in college. There may be an aunt and uncle somewhere, or cousins. She had no sisters or brothers."

Phoebe felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of how easily Jane could've and had slipped through the cracks. When she turned to Helga, she found that she was crying already too.

"None of it is fair, Pheebs." Helga dragged her arm across her face, lowered it, rubbed at the drops on her coat sleeve with her other hand. "But I want to do the right thing by her. I can't live with this hanging over me, and I don't want you to, either. And I think if we work together we can fix it, at least some of it."

Phoebe removed a bright blue mitten and wiped her eyes with bare fingers, pulled the mitten back on. "That's why I'm here."

Though he'd ended up losing the mayoral race, Bob Tanner's team of people had enough connections with clout to get the evidence in Helga's case sealed. But that didn't mean it wasn't still stored in the police department's computer files, and therefore hackable. That was Phoebe's area of expertise.

Helga was resigned to the fact that she might have to live the rest of her life under an alias, that she might even put herself more in peril, but she'd made the decision that they needed to do right by Jane. That's why she'd asked for Phoebe's help. Phoebe wished she could do more; unfortunately Helga's predicament couldn't be easily fixed.

But if they could get a look at the evidence in the file, they could study it and figure out a way to bring the truth to light. Maybe nothing would happen after that, but at least people would know the truth about Jane. Maybe, if they were lucky, justice would be done too.

"Are you sure you don't want to maybe ask Arnold and Gerald for help too?"

"Right now the less people that know the better."

Phoebe must've been telegraphing her worry. Helga smiled reassuringly and rested a comforting hand on her shoulder as they walked.

"No matter what happens, I'll always find a way to get in touch with you and let you know I'm all right, Pheebs. Just so — you know — you're not worrying and wondering about me."

For now, that would have to be enough.


End file.
